Path of BlooDld

Ashen opened his eyes to an unfamiliar stillness.

There was no pain, no blood humming, no inner screaming. Only silence… and emptiness.

He remained motionless for long minutes, staring at the stony void around him, as if afraid that the fragile truce with his body might collapse. But it didn't. He didn't break. He didn't explode. He didn't die.

He was alive.

And that alone… felt impossible.

He slowly raised his arm. There was no trembling. Only firmness. A soft strength, as if woven from a new kind of blood. He looked at his right hand and noticed the red lines pulsing calmly beneath his skin.

Then he felt something strange on his back, like worms squirming and piercing through his flesh.

A rune.

A pale, dark, but clear marking etched on his back: the head of a coiled crocodile, its mouth open as if swallowing the air.

The Crocodile Talent.

Its glow was faint, not as bright as the rune of the Blood Bear Claw, but it was there. Still… waiting.

He lowered his gaze to his feet… and there, on his ankle, were more carvings: claws engraved with extreme precision, like a kinetic tattoo poised to strike.

The Cheetah Talent.

He hadn't implanted them… hadn't planned them.

They had appeared… on their own, as if his body chose to accept the talents against his will.

He swallowed and muttered:

– "But… why aren't they igniting?"

---

He sat cross-legged in the hollow chamber, examining the three runes on his body.

Each rune appeared independent, yet restrained.

In his mind, he felt something: the Bear Claw whispering.

The rune of the Bear Claw Talent… was present. Strong. Glowing like a coal. While the others… faded, as if their light had been choked.

He quickly realized the truth:

"I can't activate more than one talent rune at the same time..."

He felt a slight tremble on his skin when he tried to activate the Cheetah Talent. The rune responded… but didn't ignite.

The Blood Claw suppressed it.

"It dominates..."

He thought while breathing slowly: "Can I break this restriction? Not just to break limits… but to fuse them."

The plan began to take shape in his mind.

---

He opened his clan's small booklet — the preserved copy of their ancient blood techniques, the one he had hidden since childhood.

He searched for any mention of talent fusion… and found little.

But one passage caught his attention:

"In the days of decline, one of the elders said that the bloodline can become a thread… connecting stars if one knows how to weave it. But the one who weaves… may burn."

He closed the book and stared at the runes.

"Then I'll burn."

---

He sat in a cultivation pose and extended his blood threads through his palms. Thanks to "Direct Blood Control," he could draw visible paths — thin red threads floating in the air.

But as soon as he tried touching the first rune… the tip of the thread burned.

A muffled scream escaped him.

A strange heat rose from his spine, as if something inside him was trying to forcibly push him away from the attempt.

He muttered, "Pain? Expected… but not enough to stop me."

He extended another thread toward the Crocodile Talent. The thread trembled, then sank into the rune… but something pierced his mind suddenly.

Screeching… roaring… heavy breathing as if a crocodile was whispering directly inside his skull.

"If you're not strong enough… I'll crush you from within."

He vomited blood.

His body convulsed.

He felt his bone marrow grinding.

...

Then, staggering, he extended a thread toward the cheetah.

But instead of agility… he felt a crushing lightness. Everything began spinning at a terrifying speed. His pulse became like the buzzing of bees in his ears. Then…

He saw himself being torn apart.

Not metaphorically… but literally.

A bloody mental vision: his claws ripping through his own guts.

Each rune wasn't fighting to merge… it was fighting to kill him.

Each one saw itself as the rightful owner of his body, soul, and bloodline.

And each one… was ready to kill for it.

...

Ashen finally realized the danger wasn't just in "fusion failure."

It was that these runes weren't just markings.

They were beasts living inside him.

Each rune had its own savage intent. And each intent held a primitive awareness… a mixture of instinct, desire, and domination.

And worse…

"I… myself… have become the prey."

...

He tried to connect them again, but in a different way.

He used the Devouring Talent — not to dominate… but to absorb their rage.

Thread after thread, he tried dozens of patterns.

Some made him temporarily lose his mind… screaming, biting his tongue, slamming his head into the wall.

In one attempt, his body partially transformed, crocodile teeth grew on his left side… then shattered inside him.

In another, his skin became striped like a cheetah, and he ran through the cave like a beast… until he slammed into the wall and lost consciousness for a full hour.

...

Some attempts left him bleeding from his eyes for days.

One of them almost burst his heart.

Every time he got the blood pattern wrong, the thread angle wrong, or the linking speed wrong… he paid the price with his body or mind.

Sometimes he heard screams in his head with no known source.

Sometimes he saw himself killing another version of himself.

Cultivation… was a curse.

Cultivation… an open grave.

But despite all of that…

He continued.

He learned that savage runes, despite their brutality, respected stubbornness.

And through blood, stubbornness becomes strength.

...

And in the final attempt… the vision was different.

His body no longer convulsed — it began to expand… to shatter and then reform.

The three intents no longer fought each other, but… watched.

Then they began to orbit his heart… slowly.

Only then...

---

A silent explosion struck inside his chest.

As if his body had absorbed a flash from other worlds.

Deep within him, something new was born.

A technique.

Incomplete… but it existed.

"Blood Beast Body"

In its first version, this body combined three spirits: the cheetah, the crocodile, and the bear. It gripped them and wrapped them in blood.

He gave the command to activate.

---

The moment he launched the new technique, he felt something move inside his bones.

His blood raced like it was chasing tiny quakes, spreading through all his limbs.

He saw a faint red glow emerge from the three runes, then they began rotating slowly within his blood, like planets in a single bloody orbit.

With each rotation, the flesh of his body thickened.

With each increase in glow, his nerves doubled in toughness.

And with every heartbeat… he felt a strength unlike anything he had ever known.

He had subdued the runes… and fused them.

"I am not the cheetah… nor the crocodile… nor even the bear…"

"I am the beast born from them all."

---

And in a distant corner of the cave, on the stone wall, small faces began to form in the shadows.

They weren't clear… they weren't human.

They were eyes without bodies.

And they were smiling.